This invention relates to a cable holder which holds that portion of a flexible flat cable adjacent to a distal end thereof, thereby facilitating the connection of the flexible flat cable to a connector, and the invention also relates to a fixing method of fixing the flexible flat cable to the cable holder.
Signal-transferring cables, which enable the connection of a plurality of wires with high reliability, include a flexible printed circuit board (hereinafter referred to as "FPC"), having wires printed on a film, and a flexible flat cable (hereinafter referred to as "FFC") having flat-type soft copper wires covered with a film. For connecting these cables to a connector, there has been used a method in which a distal end portion of the cable is grasped, and then is inserted directly into the connector. In the case of using an FPC, there has been proposed techniques (for instance, Japanese Utility Model Unexamined Publication No. 5-62980) in which a cable holder is used. More specifically, when attaching a panel having the FPC to a body having a connector, the cable holder holds that portion of the cable adjacent to a distal end thereof. This construction eliminates a troublesome operation in which the distal end portion of the cable is grasped, and then is inserted into the connector, and this also eliminates an incomplete insertion of the FPC and an incomplete locking of the connector.
However, when the above method is applied to an FFC, the following problem has been encountered. In the conventional technique, in order to prevent a cable from being disengaged from a cable holder, retaining pins are formed on the cable holder. Also, holes for respectively receiving the retaining pins are formed in that portion of the cable to be held by the cable holder. FIG. 8 shows a condition in which in order to apply a similar method to an FFC, holes 91 for respectively retaining the pins are formed on a distal end portion of the cable.
Since the FFC is a cable having flat-type soft copper wires covered with a film, the wires are disposed in parallel, having the same intervals. Therefore, when the holes 91 are formed, two (or more) wires 92 are cut or severed, and can not be used. Thus, there has been encountered a problem that the rate of utilization of the cable has been lowered.